There had to be something.
She refused to be locked away while Al faced death. To be helpless when someone she cared about needed her.
Not again. She couldn’t do this again.
The bolt scraped back, and someone stepped in. It wasn’t her father.
She froze. Dorval! He was alive and standing in her room in his smartly cut suit and wolfish smile, hands clasped behind his back. Shiny pink skin pulled the side of his face taut: a fresh burn.
‘Excuse the intrusion, Mademoiselle Rousset,’ he said, his lips curling over his incisors. ‘I hope I haven’t surprised you.’
She shook her head.
‘I understand you wish to spend some time beyond these four walls? Your father has asked me to be your chaperone.’
Her skin prickled all over as he crossed the room to take her arm.
Dorval led Ada to the parlour where her father’s accounting books were kept. They were alone, and nervously she took her seat in front of the books. Dorval sat slightly too close, sharpening his knife. Every swipe of the whetstone brushed close enough to her thigh that her skin crawled, but never quite touched her. The ink blobbed and blotted as she tried to scratch her way through her father’s household accounts. Dorval’s fingers grazed her knee and she flinched.
‘What’s wrong?’ asked Dorval, scraping the whetstone against the blade with a sickening screech.
‘May I ask a question?’ She paused for him to nod. ‘I spent several days with this … girl you are so desperate to get hold of. She is most unusual.’
‘Ah, yes. The creature. It is a strange little monster.’
Ada frowned. ‘You say “it”, monsieur, but surely she is born from the same flesh and blood as you and I?’
He gave a derisive snort. ‘It is a scientific creation, a manipulation of muscle and bone and the natural forces of our world.’
‘But she feels pain—’
‘So does a dog. Doesn’t make it human. Doesn’t give it a soul.’
Ada felt ill. She remembered the accounts of the experiments done on a conscious, pain-feeling Olympe. Vivisection.
‘I … suppose.’
This time he pressed the tip of the knife against her thigh. It was so sharp it sliced through her skirts until she felt the cold metal on her skin. She was pressing the nib so hard it snapped.
‘So ill at ease, mademoiselle. Is there something on your mind?’
‘Camille won’t pick me, you know. That’s not how we work.’ She scratched a few more numbers, totting up goods in and money out for laundry, coal and soap. ‘My father said me you’re using me to coerce her into doing what you say. It won’t work.’
The knife traced a line up her thigh, sneaking through layers of fabric. ‘Oh, I’ve been watching the two of you. She won’t give you up easily, or she wouldn’t be living in squalour, playing at being a criminal. She chose a life with you in it.’
For a moment, Ada felt herself being drawn into the story he was telling. She and Camille had already picked each other once. Maybe he wasn’t so far off.
‘Your Camille is in over her head. The duc is a man of his word. If Camille hands over the creature, he’ll let you go. And if she doesn’t, I’ll have to do my best to persuade her.’
‘No,’ she protested, but her voice was barely above a whisper.
The fabric of her skirt gaped along the knife slash, letting the frigid air raise goosebumps on her skin. Dorval pressed the tip of the blade, drawing a bead of blood. Ada gasped at the pain. He shifted closer.
Then she felt the heat of his breath against her thigh. The moist rasp of his tongue licking up the drop of blood.
‘You taste sweet.’
The door to the salon opened, and, as fast, Dorval was sitting in his chair, idly running the whetstone over the knife.
